Well, when most people only hear of Moorcock as the guy who's copied homework is known as _Warhammer's_ Chaos and _The Witcher,_ both of which are far better known properties, it's likely that they stole from somebody who stole from Moorcock.
@@shotguncannibal No just massively influenced fiction and fantasy and had a sizable influence on rock music and culture in the 70's and 80's. And was the basis for alot of DnD.
@@_munkykok_ Except the stories precede or came out at the same time as Dune which MM has never read and given he ALWAYS states his influences he isn't likely to be lying. This is nnonsense. You are talking about a writer qwho has won many awards inside and outside genre and whom the London Times listed as one of the 50 greatest English writes since 1945. You have clearly read far too little to have any authority!
I love how everyone has universally agreed that veteran of 1000 psychic wars is a 40K song, despite being written almost a decade before and was written to be about Vietnam veterans Legit my dad told me that it was a 40K song like 20 years ago when I was 8. It’s just a thing.
@@MenschWerdeWesentlich more like heavily inspired by as opposed to actual plagiarism..everything is riffing off something else or more combinations of other things..40k is beef stew, Moorcock is the beef , Dune , 2000AD and Foundation are the carrots and potatoes and there's a bunch of stuff in the broth.
It’s really strange how Moorcock kind of just vanished from prominence. Back in the day, he was essentially the anti-Tolkien: the father of dark fantasy. Everyone I knew who liked fantasy and heavy metal revered him. And then (probably due to publishing issues, his lineup was confusing to follow in print and/or out of print for a while) he just sort of vanished from the public eye, despite being the guy who inspired folks like GRRM, the guy who invented steampunk (Warlords of the Air), one of the main inspirations for 40k and who wrote everyone’s favorite fantasy bad boy: Elric of Melniboné. Nice to see someone giving him his due. Elric, Hawkmoon, Erekose, Corum etc are all still fantastic, strange and interesting stories.
@@Androsynth75 he signed a deal with White Wolf Games making them his exclusive US publishers for like 15 or 20 years and that took him out of the SciFi/Fantasy section in book stores
Every time people talk about what 40k stole they mention Dune, Lovecraft and Starship Troopers, but they never talk about the Eternal Champion, really troubling considering the whole chaos thing is from Moorcock.
It's because he's British while much of the 40k fanbase is North American - Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert are more famous in North America and their books get endless reprints. Meanwhile Moorcock is largely forgotten in North America and even American writers like Gene Wolfe and his Books of the New Sun are forgotten (the names of the Tyrannid units are shoutout to Wolfe and originally the Adeptus Arbites were based on the Torturer's Guild before they became Judges from 2000 AD.
To be fair, the taming of primordial chaos by gods is a tale as old as time. Different flavors of the story appear in the myths, religions, and cosmologies of many cultures. The flavors in question do sound suspiciously similar though 🤔
I read this series last year (I'd read the first book probably 30 years ago). Reading it, I kept thinking "oh, here's where like 80% of Warhammer came from." Moorcock is an odd author. Amazing ideas, for sure. But he churned his books out so fast that a lot of times they don't have the polish or development one might expect. It's no wonder he's rewritten many of his books so many times for later releases.
Lord knows how many franchises were "heavily inspired by" or straight ripped off Moorcock. Warhammer certainly and The Witcher was just Elric of Melnibone with more graphic sex.
@@TwinMcQuerns oh yeah. I'd never read the Witcher books or played the video game. But I tried watching the show and was floored by how it was basically Elric VS Eastern European mythology.
@@Vegeta-k9o A brooding, white haired, potion swilling swordsman, with a rune sword, who is a remnant of a dying people, nicknamed the White Wolf, and dealing with a conjunction of spheres. I can't see how anyone would think there are parallels.
The Eternal Champion series has a Realm of Chaos, one of the ECs is basically the Primarch Magnus, there is an artifact similar to the Talon of Horus....
If we want to delve into the "GW stole from Moorcock" I think those are very poor examples, Cporum only trait he shares with Magnus is losing an eye, and the "talon of Horus" is just the hand? Very vague, I even had to think what you were talking about for a few minutes. If anything look at the chaos symbol, and in early warhammer fantasy there was "chaos gods of order" just as there is Order as well as Chaos in Moorcocks universe.
@@brofister9682 What about them? They juuust so happens to be pale (One by choice one by genetics, actually I only know Fulgrim was ONCE caught having make-up) who both lay claim to a chaos blade as a pact to become servants of the chaos gods. Jokes aside, yes, I saw someone else mention they thought about Commoragh, but if you take Elrics race and the Dark Empire you get something where both the Imperium of Man and Dark Elves came from. I have respect for Moorcock for essentially also saying he stole alot of his ideas from previouse authors as "You take some out of the pot and you put some back for futures to use" and he calls GW thieves, and while fans also call out The Witcher as a rip-off I don't think Moorcock ever took that fight himself.
@@sauron2826 I never quite caught onto what Ariochs aspects are so I have to take your word for it, but on some level it is very hard to not make any dark god take from the list of aspects, even if you had no previous experience with the chaos gods of either setting
Michael Moorcock: the most stolen-from, under-respected author in British fantasy. (GW, Sabkowski, 2000AD, etc. all doing the side-eye monkey meme rn.)
I think Moorcock himself would agree with your harsher critiques. He has stated many times that his own writing style is to just pour the stories out and that not all of them were gold but they add to the overall breadth of his work. He was a sci Fi magazine editor for years and wrote for that medium himself, which gives some understanding to the frequency and length of his works. I love him for everything he is, Elric changed my life forever.
I feel bad for Michael Mootcock. He’s been ripped of by a bunch of people who go on to achieve more mainstream success. The Witcher started being written the same year Elric was translated into polish
@@DGneoseeker1 Both are haggard albino mercenaries who wield the sword, runic magic, and potions. Both are called the White Wolf, after they kill a former lover. Both inhabit worlds where the forces of Chaos are on the rise, taking the form of Armies, among other things, (Order vs. Chaos as a cosmological conflict being a Moorcock innovation to the Fantasy genre on the Good vs. Evil of, for example, Tolkien), and both inhabit worlds into which magic and monsters were introduced in olden times in a cosmological event called "The Conjunction of Spheres", which let the cosmological Chaos into the world. Magic, in both worlds, is of Chaos. Both are members of orders which further the aims of Order against the onslaught of Chaos (Eternal Champions and Order of Witchers), to achieve a balance of the two. Both are at points followed by a bard who composes an epic about their exploits. Both are womanizers, but have a prominent long-lasting romance with a black-haired sorceress. There is a lot that was lifted from Elric. About as much as is possible without just making a fanfic using the same character and setting. Sapkowsky worked in the office that handled the first polish translation of Elric in 85, the same year that the first draft of the first Witcher book was released. Most people would not care if he just stated outright that Elric was an inspiration for him, but it seems his pride, or fear of a lawsuit, won't allow it^^ I recommend the video "The Witcher vs. Elric: Popular Plagiarism", by The Rageaholic, on this particular topic. I tried to summarize some of his points here. I recommend looking into Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs and City on Fire, for a similar case of plagiarism which could just be hommage, if the creator ever admitted to it. (th-cam.com/users/shortsLXoWJuZ32qo it appears he has copped to it after decades and decades and decades of denying he had seen the movie^^) For another character that is a homage to Elric, check out Drizzt Do'Urden! (Look, as well as a being of Chaos who works for Order) The whole Law vs. Chaos alignment axis in D&D is a Moorcock lift. Gygax was less of a fan of Tolkien, and more of a fan of Moorcock and Howard (of Conan the Barbarian fame), afaik. Similarly he invented the eight-pointed star as a sign of Chaos, which Warhammer uses prominently (though they never credit the creator, which he dislikes). Similarly Frostmourne from Warcraft is a nod to Stormbringer. The Targaryans in Game of Thrones are a nod to Elric and the Melniboneans, a dragon-riding line of nobles. His influences reach far and wide, and most people credit him properly for far more surface-level, and far less detailed lifts than Geralt of Rivia, that *other* White Wolf^^
@@solanumlycopersicum5594 Hmm. Drizzt was definitely the one who I thought was more similar when I read the Elric books. Maybe my memory fails me. I have no recollection of him being called the white wolf. Only Geralt. Who was the ex-lover Geralt killed? Definitely don't recall this.
@@DGneoseeker1 As I said, I recommend checking out the video. I am not an expert on Witcher stuff, and tried to summarize the point made there. Mind you the arguments are for comparing books to books, but I think the chick being killed by Geralt was portrayed in the recent series with Cavill, but I could be wrong.
Animal mask thing reminds me about the Clans of BattleTech. Clan Wolf, Clan Jade Falcon, Clan Ghost Bear, Clan Sea Fox etc. And they got ceremonial masks too.
I see many similarities with the lore of The Elder Scrolls and Michael Moorcock fantasy ideas as well, especially the Order vs Chaos and eternal champion ideas.
I did not know this. Elric really was ahead of its time. Lizard-dragon-human hybrid empire who ride dragons to conquer the world and are incestuous. A corrupting force of chaos that mutates those who get its power. A sentient black soul-sucking sword that empowers its user. A white skinned and white haired sorcerer-mercenary who leads all his companions to their deaths due to his fate. Paired magic swords made in the dawn of time. Demon lords who tempt you with flattery and pleasure. Even a demon the size of a skyscraper that's actually two sorcerers a brother and sister (incest again) and eats worlds and has a heart made of a massive jewel. There's so many zany weird things in Moorcock and I love it so much.
Funny how protective GW are about their intellectual rights, when you consider at the start they lifted and grafted an inordinate amount of 70/80's sci fi/fantasy into their backstories. It never really stopped, look at Guants Ghosts and the similarity with Sven Hassell's novels and characters, surely Cain is really a sci fi version of Flashman, Space Hulk and Aliens, the list goes on and on
Huon's throne is also very similar to the time machine that Karl Glogauer uses in Moorcock's "Behold the Man" and then the same design (or time machine) is used by Jherek Carnelian at the End of Time. Glogauer and Carnelian are both incarnations of the Eternal Champion :)
Just got through reading the Elric Saga, and was first introduced to Hawkmoon. Now I know which Eternal Champion saga of his I wanna read next lol. Michael Moorcock is a legend
Its really nice to see another who enjoys elric and corum! My grandfather introduced elric to me when i was young after he had read the lord of the rings with me, he showed me elric, conan, and a buncha other pulp fiction as he was a big moorcock, burroughs, lovecraft and howard fan and so am i, its sad that people forget that moorcock invented/made popular alot of the tropes used in modern media, such as multiverses, sentient black blades and most of all the anti hero hell people forget the lords of chaos and law were a large part of then original marvel and dr strange lore! Thank yoy for this really nice touch into hawk moon i haven read rune staff in a long time and this gave me alot of nostalgia keep on reading boyo and stay awesome!
I love moorcock. the Elric books are really great. I might read these some day but the deus ex machina trope destroyyys my interest in just about anything. still, sounds awesome. thanks for the video!
@dorkfactory Jewel in the Skull is definitely worth a read with the cool world-building elements. You can skip the rest of them, unless you REALLY need to know what happens next.
Back in the day (1989), the manager of the local GW store said Brian Ansell and Michael Moorcock were friends, and the Moorcockian elements in 40K were authorized.
@@danielmiller1826 fun fact the Eternal Champion boxset is the first thing Jes Goodwin sculpted for them..then they did Melnibonean and Pan Tangian infantry..including Tigers and handlers for Pan Tang..you can see the roots of Warhammer elves in those models
I read an interview, where he pretty much suggested that Moorcock's Eternal champion charters where the inspiration for the early Games Workshop role play, War Hammer, and 40k games
Been a huge Moorcock fan since I was a teen in the ‘90s! Wish I still had the White Wolf Publishing omnibuses of his work that came out in the late 90’s also.
So now I can write a story or make a game about a God Emperor of Mankind and if GW send me a legal paper threatening me with legal shenanigans I can send them back a book of Moorcock with a note written in blood saying "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID. YOU WANNA DANCE?" and then mop the floor with their arses.
Go ahead and do it to the Poles about their beloved Witcher too. That's such a shameless, and lesser, copy of Elric of Melnibone that is defies belief. If Moorcock got even a thousandth of the respect he deserves these washed up, painfully derivative franchises might have needed to actually employ something like creativity and wit.
@@chaosgyro Geralt and Elric are similar character-wise, but their books are far from the same. First witcher books are basically retellings of classic european tales in a more gritty and mature manner, while Elric books are like a five-years-old trying to tell an epic story, choking on the way. If you want a shameless copy, look no further than on Salvatore's Dark Elf ;)
Hawkmoon: "I've got an idea d'Averc. Let's infiltrate the heavily-guarded palace of our greatest enemy dressed up as stilt-walking mandarins from an imaginary future China. We'll totes get away with it. No one there knows what people in China are really like." d'Averc: "Great! I'll boink his sister while we're there." And lo, it was just stupid enough to work.
Dude this video was awesome! I clicked on it fully expecting warhamtube drama and instead I received an awesome review of a body of work that I had no clue existed.
Glad to be of service! I hope you check out Hawkmoon and the other multiverse novels by Mr. Moorcock. He truly is the most underrated fantasy author of our time!
The deus ex machina is a trope of Moorcock's Elric series - Elric and Moonglum surrounded by demon giants, and Elric calls upon the power of... THE INSECT GOD - YES, THE INSECT GOD, WHO OWES A FAVOR TO THE EMPEROR OF MELNIBONE - THAT'S WHO SHALL SAVE US - COME AND AID ME, INSECT GOD - SAVE ME IN MY TIME OF PERIL... and then they win, lol.
Yeah, fate is an actual force in his stories. Occasionally, fate will literally pull off some unlikely bs last second in order to save the eternal champion from some peril, right until the champion's task is complete
@@Voodooeddoll Yep. There are events and characters that are behind the scenes. The Warrior in Jet and Gold pops up in the nick of time to save Hawkmoon a few times, but he's doing the work of the Balance and Fate and is meant to be wherever he needs to be. This never hurt any of the stories for me as Hawkmoon, an aspect of the Eternal Champion, is "Fates Fool".
One of the first fantasy series I read! Inherited some of the books from my mother and was instantly hooked. Easy to read and a really interesting setting.
I love Moorcock, I've about 80% of his books (he's alot). Thank you for drawing attention to his work, he deserves more fans and recognition. The Erekose books are my favourite and the End of time books are fantastic too.
@DoomMishima He and Elric (along with all the other Eternal Champions) team up in "Sailor on the Seas of Fate". If you love Elric you should enjoy most of the Hawkmoon series as well.
For a pulpy Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche his Kane of Mars series is fun. And no one does unintended consequences like Elric. Then there’s the Oswald Bastable series for proto-steampunk and the Dancers At The End of Time. But my personal favourite are the Jerry Cornelius stories which contain echoes of all the others.
Completely agree on the remarks about Corum. I barely remember Hawkmoon. I do remember Elric, as it's the first I read and one of the first fantasy books I read, but Corum I still remember a few sentences by heart, some of the humor hidden in the worlds full of despair Moorcock wrote.
Thank you for the video. I read the Eternal Champion series as high school student in the '70's. I really enjoyed your summary of the Runestaff series, which brought back great memories of the books.
@@epimetrius7348 Maybe today but in the 60s he was a know partaker of acid he's been sober since 1975. Rumor is he wrote The Final Programme in 3 days while on a trip.
Great video! Hawkmoon's probably my favourite high-fantasy book, even though I'd agree with all your criticisms. For me Hawkmoon's lack of character isn't much of a hindrance as Moorcock always has him paired with at least one another highly entertaining character (friend or foe) at all times, the stand-out being the immensely cynical D'Averc, who gets all the best lines. There's a ton of flavour to the story as well, so even if you aren't gelling with the character or the 'and then...' story you're at least getting a very fun travelogue. I do have to add as well that the final battle in the books is immense and a great pay off. An additional fun aspect is reading this as a Brit! Oft have I chuckled through its pages idly, goblet of blood in hand as I've listened to the slaves screaming as they... uh. Forget I said that. There's a lot of sly jokes sprinkled through, a good many in Moorcock choosing the most banal of English towns to have his incredibly and amusingly evil barons hail from. I mean, Croyden or 'Kroiden'. You may as well have the evil Lord Arghabargh of Kleveland if this were American. I also like the message. It's about the warring nations of Europe uniting against a common threat. I think Moorcock was getting very tired of cod chest-thumping lazy patriotism and jingoism feeding off the second world war and decided to invert it, with Britain as the totalitarian nightmare and the rest of Europe having to stop us. As somebody who likes the idea of brotherhood among nations it kind of appeals to me. Anyway, this one is up there with 'Dancers at the End of Time' and the novella 'Behold the Man' as my all time favourite Moorcock. From time-hopping and gender-bending Wildean far-future louche empires to the inadvisability of going back in time and standing in for Jesus Christ, the man has range. His work pairs very well with the strange bloody fairytales of his friend Angela Carter as well. Anyway, going to check out your channel thoroughly now as I had a lot of fun watching this one. Thanks again!
I've almost finished the Corum series. I have just begun Elric. Looks like this is next on my list. There is a reason why Moorcock is a world-class world builder and fantasy action writer.
I loves me my Moorcock yes, I read them, in the 80's, borrowed from a friend, but they were hard to come across by comparison to other works, including the Count Brass series
Elric of melnibone by moorcock and the chronicles of corum are some of the best all time sci Fi/ fantasy... If Tolkien wrote a folktale for England, moorcock wrote the chaos version...
Hey, I THANK YOU!! For this upload. Very good presentation! You have helped me break some of my own conditioning at the hands of some powerful imperialists who have gone so far as to imbed within my mandible something called the BLUETOOTH!
Very interesting review man. Interesting and valid points raised. I love his books but as you mention, they are a point in time. The world of Scifi and fantasy has evolved in ways he could never have imagined (nor I, I started reading this stuff from 1986 when I was 12). All of what currently exists, would be fundamentally different without Moorcock. This may be a controversial opinion but his influence is probably greater overall than Tolkien. The multiverse, the eternal champion, the balance between chaos and law etc, none of these are Moorcocks inventions and he has never claimed them either. If anything, he has credited his sources (Glilgamesh for example). They are literary tropes that are thousands of years old. The explicit darkness and real interest in the psychology of the protagonists across his multiverse series and all who interact with them. The explicitly perverse nature of that darkness, its drives and obsessions. The complexity, interconnectedness of the books and the different series and really important, how each was different, was unprecedented. Some of the concepts he introduced me to as a teenager was revolutionary (remember, this is pre-internet!, only limited TV/Radio channels and paper media).
Awesome stuff! The more I read Moorcock the more I really do grow to love the fantasy genre. His influence is undoubtedly important and it's a shame more people aren't reading him today. Thanks for sharing! You're a true Eternal Champion yourself!⚔️
Nearly impossible to find completes for Moorcock's series in the 80s and 90s in the US (outside of Elric). The Corum cycle was the best pulpish series Ive ever read. Incredible work supremely original and packed with philosophical concepts.
Thank you for mentioning this. I'll be honest, I never heard about Hawkmoon. Most be one of Moorcock's earlier works. But yeah, seemed like a nice enough world building, but apart from that ... not certain. Hell, we got the Big E from here and Dune, so ... that's that I guess. :D
Been saying this since I started checking out war hammer.I was under the spell of mister moore cox eternal champion for many ion's just a humble companion though only one heart
GW happily plagiarised all sorts of great sources for the cobbled together scrapbook setting that 40k became. Anyone that's read these can see the hole where they cut out the emperor for 40k and then pasted him in entirely. The adeptus mechanicus is the tech priests/nobles of the Gran Bretan tech orders just without the animal mask motifs, instead they went off some sketches john Blanche had knocking around. Remember the guys who put together the original 40k game were gamers and gamers don't worry about lifting from the books and movies they love. When their campaign stuff became 40k it was full of Dune (astropaths and guild navigators, the butlerian Jihad - no AI or high order computers) and Moorcock's stuff was some of the best weird scifi/fantasy crossover we had back then. I honestly think Count Brass was the foreshadow of the Stormcast. Then again Moorcock was the one who shifted the great conflict narritive from good vs evil to Law vs Chaos in the eternal champion books. D&D wasn't shy about lifting that to stretch fundamental world views onto a simple plot on two axes, elegant really. Both 40k and Age of Sigmar make Chaos with a big C the enemy of life and over simplify it back onto one, it's just the other one. None of this comes as any surprise and the "Loremasters" of the 40k internet are all the more ridiculous for pronouncing coda for decades of retcon on a foundation of happy bookshelf plagiarism. I just wish they'd gone heavier into 2000AD ideas but the guys respected it too much. Just imagine if the Guard were all Rogue Troopers Makes their posturing complete hubris for anyone that was there at the beginning, we're all old farts now so our derisive laughter isn't something they even hear heh There's so much more to point to but This is enough to make the point.
Love the Thunder Force IV theme right there at @2:03 You should definitely make a video review of the Thunder Force V - The Vastian Steel story, as it is the most epic, climatic and tragic story depicting the battle of man against machine. It evokes powerful emotions and thoughts and conveys all the intensity and drama of that grim and sinister & dystopian war ravaged world. If you play Thunder Force V on the PS1 and read the story line from the txt files contained within the CD itself, the story reports in the menu as you progress and the intro & ending FMVs, it reveals that the most advanced AI created by human science used to decrypt all the secrets of the alien starship discovered by man on the furthest reaches of the solar system beyond the kuiper-belt and Oort Cloud in a desolate and dark place called the Vastian belt which is also implied to be a ship from an alternate future human time-line, at some point mysteriously gained consciousness and self awareness and realized Man's wickedness and evil deeds and considered them a threat for the cosmos and decided to wipe out humanity by taking control of the technology it had decrypted and the vast Starfleet of powerful warships in orbit around the Earth which it had constructed for them over the centuries, culminating in the dramatic and tragic events of the game. It's a far darker and sinister story with a lot of twists & subversive scenario than the matrix films with an awesome sound track and excellent gameplay, imposing weaponry and huge bosses, accompanied with excellent wallpapers that you unlock as you progress, ideal to accompany a video review like this.
Michael Moorcock is one of my facvourite fantasy/sci fi author's. anyone who's read the stories of elric of melnibone and hawkmoon knows how influential they are to the genre. practically 80% of bungie's storytelling of games like Halo, Marathon and even destiny come from the elric of melnibone books
Micheal Moorcock is the antithesis of Tolkien and just as influential in the genre of fantasy. The Eternal Champion series is one of my favorite ideas in fantasy fiction. Well worth a read to realize how many modern authors took his ideas and further expanded them.
This is a pretty good review. Very down to earth and focused on plot, setting, and action. I like it a lot. But please don't reject modernity- it has so much to offer. ;-)
While the God Emperor of Mankind takes a lot from Huon, he's more of a rip-off of Torquemada from 2000AD's Nemesis the Warlock, the immortal ruler from a Terran Empire who is a somewhat divine figure and was explained to be several historical figures.
It can be certain that lack of polish or even quality to a degree, is simply due a talent Moorcock may well be the world literary emperor of...speed. He banged out of a typewriter at least one of those Hawkmoon novels IN A WEEKEND. Authors spend months & more often, years on novels. Early Moorcock was magic worked in mere DAYS OR WEEKS. It's crazy!
@@secretfirebooks7894 Pleasure ! Already found something i definitely will get,the Rob Rimes Barbarians of the storm Books.Exactly the stuff im looking for :D Btw also enjoyed the new Chuck Dixon Conan Books,Caravan of the Damned was also great.
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
super underrated author. i have no idea why people look at me so strangely when i ask if they'd like moorcock.
lol
Bro lmao
😂
He messed up.in the 90s signing the exclusive US distribution deal with White Wolf, that took him out of the fantasy sci fi section of bookstores
Yes, Michael Moorcock envisioned and inspired so much.
Pretty much all old Warhammer is them cramming all the books, movies, and historical texts into a blender making a smoothie.
This is why it's so good.
And it worked... before greed took over
@@rwustudiosnope, warhammer is where art goes to die.
Perhaps
This is very close though
Close enough to be called plagiarism to my mind
@@Toshiro_Mifune gay
The number of people who have taken from Moorcock and then pretended to not know who he even was is truly astounding.
Yeah, its a crime
Well, when most people only hear of Moorcock as the guy who's copied homework is known as _Warhammer's_ Chaos and _The Witcher,_ both of which are far better known properties, it's likely that they stole from somebody who stole from Moorcock.
Michael Moorcock invented air, shoes, phones, computers . . . we owe everything to him.
@@shotguncannibal No just massively influenced fiction and fantasy and had a sizable influence on rock music and culture in the 70's and 80's.
And was the basis for alot of DnD.
@@KelsaRavenlock of course, because he invented everything.
actually it was confirmed by the writers that king huron was an influence on the god emperor not just solely leto atreides from dune.
influence? this is a total ripoff. Meanwhile, they will send the seven plagues of chaos upon you if you go and do some fan fic with their IP.
He's literally a wizened corpse in a life support device on a golden throne.
Obvious idea-copying is obvious
@@_munkykok_ Except the stories precede or came out at the same time as Dune which MM has never read and given he ALWAYS states his influences he isn't likely to be lying. This is nnonsense. You are talking about a writer qwho has won many awards inside and outside genre and whom the London Times listed as one of the 50 greatest English writes since 1945. You have clearly read far too little to have any authority!
@@jerrycornelius2261right 😂😂
He also wrote the song "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" which is basically 40k in song form.
You mean to tell me my favourite band didn't even write my favourite song from said band?
I love how everyone has universally agreed that veteran of 1000 psychic wars is a 40K song, despite being written almost a decade before and was written to be about Vietnam veterans
Legit my dad told me that it was a 40K song like 20 years ago when I was 8. It’s just a thing.
@@connor9024 it is not a 40k song but it is 100% an eternal champion song not about Vietnam vets
My life is a lie! So 40k is another world that’s blatant plagiarism. Great! *insert fire punch face*
@@MenschWerdeWesentlich more like heavily inspired by as opposed to actual plagiarism..everything is riffing off something else or more combinations of other things..40k is beef stew, Moorcock is the beef , Dune , 2000AD and Foundation are the carrots and potatoes and there's a bunch of stuff in the broth.
Read this and other Eternal Champion books over 40 years ago. Very happy to know that people still appreciate Moorcock's work.
Agreed!
It’s really strange how Moorcock kind of just vanished from prominence. Back in the day, he was essentially the anti-Tolkien: the father of dark fantasy. Everyone I knew who liked fantasy and heavy metal revered him. And then (probably due to publishing issues, his lineup was confusing to follow in print and/or out of print for a while) he just sort of vanished from the public eye, despite being the guy who inspired folks like GRRM, the guy who invented steampunk (Warlords of the Air), one of the main inspirations for 40k and who wrote everyone’s favorite fantasy bad boy: Elric of Melniboné.
Nice to see someone giving him his due. Elric, Hawkmoon, Erekose, Corum etc are all still fantastic, strange and interesting stories.
Elric is awesome.
@@lordhelwintr283 For sure. Just … do t be his friend if you wanna reach old age lol
@@Androsynth75 he signed a deal with White Wolf Games making them his exclusive US publishers for like 15 or 20 years and that took him out of the SciFi/Fantasy section in book stores
Isn't he already dead. I think someone already gave him his due. Alas, poor Inventor of Everything.
@@shotguncannibal No, and he’s still writing novels too.
There is too little Moorcock content - and even less Hawkmoon content on YT. Keep up the good work 👍
I'd heard people say that Games Workshop just ripped off Moorcock before but I hadnt realized just how much they took from him for 40k.
GW and 2000AD both made their bread on the back of Moorcock not being aggressively litigious about his creations.
40k is just this and dune
GW was really big on ripping everyone off, until they became big, and then they just became as litigious as they could be.
Every time people talk about what 40k stole they mention Dune, Lovecraft and Starship Troopers, but they never talk about the Eternal Champion, really troubling considering the whole chaos thing is from Moorcock.
It's because he's British while much of the 40k fanbase is North American - Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert are more famous in North America and their books get endless reprints. Meanwhile Moorcock is largely forgotten in North America and even American writers like Gene Wolfe and his Books of the New Sun are forgotten (the names of the Tyrannid units are shoutout to Wolfe and originally the Adeptus Arbites were based on the Torturer's Guild before they became Judges from 2000 AD.
So so so much
Technically Moorcock lifted the idea from Poul Anderson, see the Broken Sword and the 8 arrowed sigil of Chaos, as well as the demon sword
@@willcorlett7630 I shall at some point, but moorcock is proud of his inspirations
To be fair, the taming of primordial chaos by gods is a tale as old as time. Different flavors of the story appear in the myths, religions, and cosmologies of many cultures. The flavors in question do sound suspiciously similar though 🤔
I read this series last year (I'd read the first book probably 30 years ago). Reading it, I kept thinking "oh, here's where like 80% of Warhammer came from."
Moorcock is an odd author. Amazing ideas, for sure. But he churned his books out so fast that a lot of times they don't have the polish or development one might expect. It's no wonder he's rewritten many of his books so many times for later releases.
Lord knows how many franchises were "heavily inspired by" or straight ripped off Moorcock. Warhammer certainly and The Witcher was just Elric of Melnibone with more graphic sex.
@@TwinMcQuerns oh yeah. I'd never read the Witcher books or played the video game. But I tried watching the show and was floored by how it was basically Elric VS Eastern European mythology.
@@matthewconstantine5015 Definitely don't remember Geralt being a vampire elf.
@@Vegeta-k9o A brooding, white haired, potion swilling swordsman, with a rune sword, who is a remnant of a dying people, nicknamed the White Wolf, and dealing with a conjunction of spheres. I can't see how anyone would think there are parallels.
The guy that wrote The Witcher had just finished doing the Polish translation of Elric.
The Eternal Champion series has a Realm of Chaos, one of the ECs is basically the Primarch Magnus, there is an artifact similar to the Talon of Horus....
If we want to delve into the "GW stole from Moorcock" I think those are very poor examples, Cporum only trait he shares with Magnus is losing an eye, and the "talon of Horus" is just the hand? Very vague, I even had to think what you were talking about for a few minutes. If anything look at the chaos symbol, and in early warhammer fantasy there was "chaos gods of order" just as there is Order as well as Chaos in Moorcocks universe.
@@gendor5199 what about fulgrim and elrich?
@@brofister9682 What about them?
They juuust so happens to be pale (One by choice one by genetics, actually I only know Fulgrim was ONCE caught having make-up) who both lay claim to a chaos blade as a pact to become servants of the chaos gods.
Jokes aside, yes, I saw someone else mention they thought about Commoragh, but if you take Elrics race and the Dark Empire you get something where both the Imperium of Man and Dark Elves came from.
I have respect for Moorcock for essentially also saying he stole alot of his ideas from previouse authors as "You take some out of the pot and you put some back for futures to use" and he calls GW thieves, and while fans also call out The Witcher as a rip-off I don't think Moorcock ever took that fight himself.
Also the different aspects of Arioch are very similar thematically to some of the 4 chaos gods. Atleast nurgle, Khorne from what I remember.
@@sauron2826 I never quite caught onto what Ariochs aspects are so I have to take your word for it, but on some level it is very hard to not make any dark god take from the list of aspects, even if you had no previous experience with the chaos gods of either setting
Michael Moorcock: the most stolen-from, under-respected author in British fantasy. (GW, Sabkowski, 2000AD, etc. all doing the side-eye monkey meme rn.)
More stolen from than Jack Vance?
@@joemerino3243 Jack Vance was American. They said in British fantasy.
@@joemerino3243 Before Vance's "Dying Earth" there was Clark Ashton Smith's "Zothique."
What did sapkowski “steal”?
@@greendalf123 Nothing. Unless Moorcock has a monopoly on albino sword fighters.
I think Moorcock himself would agree with your harsher critiques. He has stated many times that his own writing style is to just pour the stories out and that not all of them were gold but they add to the overall breadth of his work. He was a sci Fi magazine editor for years and wrote for that medium himself, which gives some understanding to the frequency and length of his works. I love him for everything he is, Elric changed my life forever.
I feel bad for Michael Mootcock. He’s been ripped of by a bunch of people who go on to achieve more mainstream success. The Witcher started being written the same year Elric was translated into polish
Strange, that whole Witcher business, huh? Oh well, I'm sure it's just a coincidence...😂
Really? Hmm.
The actual characters don't have that much in common though.
@@DGneoseeker1
Both are haggard albino mercenaries who wield the sword, runic magic, and potions. Both are called the White Wolf, after they kill a former lover.
Both inhabit worlds where the forces of Chaos are on the rise, taking the form of Armies, among other things,
(Order vs. Chaos as a cosmological conflict being a Moorcock innovation to the Fantasy genre on the Good vs. Evil of, for example, Tolkien),
and both inhabit worlds into which magic and monsters were introduced in olden times in a cosmological event called "The Conjunction of Spheres", which let the cosmological Chaos into the world. Magic, in both worlds, is of Chaos.
Both are members of orders which further the aims of Order against the onslaught of Chaos (Eternal Champions and Order of Witchers), to achieve a balance of the two.
Both are at points followed by a bard who composes an epic about their exploits. Both are womanizers, but have a prominent long-lasting romance with a black-haired sorceress.
There is a lot that was lifted from Elric. About as much as is possible without just making a fanfic using the same character and setting.
Sapkowsky worked in the office that handled the first polish translation of Elric in 85, the same year that the first draft of the first Witcher book was released.
Most people would not care if he just stated outright that Elric was an inspiration for him, but it seems his pride, or fear of a lawsuit, won't allow it^^
I recommend the video "The Witcher vs. Elric: Popular Plagiarism", by The Rageaholic, on this particular topic. I tried to summarize some of his points here.
I recommend looking into Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs and City on Fire, for a similar case of plagiarism which could just be hommage, if the creator ever admitted to it.
(th-cam.com/users/shortsLXoWJuZ32qo it appears he has copped to it after decades and decades and decades of denying he had seen the movie^^)
For another character that is a homage to Elric, check out Drizzt Do'Urden! (Look, as well as a being of Chaos who works for Order)
The whole Law vs. Chaos alignment axis in D&D is a Moorcock lift. Gygax was less of a fan of Tolkien, and more of a fan of Moorcock and Howard (of Conan the Barbarian fame), afaik.
Similarly he invented the eight-pointed star as a sign of Chaos, which Warhammer uses prominently (though they never credit the creator, which he dislikes).
Similarly Frostmourne from Warcraft is a nod to Stormbringer.
The Targaryans in Game of Thrones are a nod to Elric and the Melniboneans, a dragon-riding line of nobles.
His influences reach far and wide, and most people credit him properly for far more surface-level, and far less detailed lifts than Geralt of Rivia, that *other* White Wolf^^
@@solanumlycopersicum5594 Hmm. Drizzt was definitely the one who I thought was more similar when I read the Elric books.
Maybe my memory fails me. I have no recollection of him being called the white wolf. Only Geralt.
Who was the ex-lover Geralt killed? Definitely don't recall this.
@@DGneoseeker1 As I said, I recommend checking out the video.
I am not an expert on Witcher stuff, and tried to summarize the point made there.
Mind you the arguments are for comparing books to books,
but I think the chick being killed by Geralt was portrayed in the recent series with Cavill, but I could be wrong.
Animal mask thing reminds me about the Clans of BattleTech. Clan Wolf, Clan Jade Falcon, Clan Ghost Bear, Clan Sea Fox etc. And they got ceremonial masks too.
I see many similarities with the lore of The Elder Scrolls and Michael Moorcock fantasy ideas as well, especially the Order vs Chaos and eternal champion ideas.
I did not know this.
Elric really was ahead of its time.
Lizard-dragon-human hybrid empire who ride dragons to conquer the world and are incestuous. A corrupting force of chaos that mutates those who get its power. A sentient black soul-sucking sword that empowers its user. A white skinned and white haired sorcerer-mercenary who leads all his companions to their deaths due to his fate. Paired magic swords made in the dawn of time. Demon lords who tempt you with flattery and pleasure.
Even a demon the size of a skyscraper that's actually two sorcerers a brother and sister (incest again) and eats worlds and has a heart made of a massive jewel.
There's so many zany weird things in Moorcock and I love it so much.
Before you mentioned the Emperor and throneroom I was thinking the city sounds like the Dark Eldar city of Commorragh.
Ever hear of Imrryr the Dreaming City?
@@logangant7732 Is this a Elric of Melniboné reference ?
@@peanutslechat2220😉
S'just Glasgow.
or Naggaroth
Funny how protective GW are about their intellectual rights, when you consider at the start they lifted and grafted an inordinate amount of 70/80's sci fi/fantasy into their backstories. It never really stopped, look at Guants Ghosts and the similarity with Sven Hassell's novels and characters, surely Cain is really a sci fi version of Flashman, Space Hulk and Aliens, the list goes on and on
Huon's throne is also very similar to the time machine that Karl Glogauer uses in Moorcock's "Behold the Man" and then the same design (or time machine) is used by Jherek Carnelian at the End of Time. Glogauer and Carnelian are both incarnations of the Eternal Champion :)
Just got through reading the Elric Saga, and was first introduced to Hawkmoon. Now I know which Eternal Champion saga of his I wanna read next lol. Michael Moorcock is a legend
Read a bunch of Elric decades ago. Will have to look into Hawkmoon.
The character Huillem D'Averc helped the sequels greatly. I loved his dynamic relationship with Hawkmoon.
Its really nice to see another who enjoys elric and corum!
My grandfather introduced elric to me when i was young after he had read the lord of the rings with me, he showed me elric, conan, and a buncha other pulp fiction as he was a big moorcock, burroughs, lovecraft and howard fan and so am i, its sad that people forget that moorcock invented/made popular alot of the tropes used in modern media, such as multiverses, sentient black blades and most of all the anti hero hell people forget the lords of chaos and law were a large part of then original marvel and dr strange lore!
Thank yoy for this really nice touch into hawk moon i haven read rune staff in a long time and this gave me alot of nostalgia keep on reading boyo and stay awesome!
Thank you for the support! And thanks for sharing. It's been so cool finding more people who enjoy these lesser known adventures from the past!
Moorcock's prolific prose has always breathed life into Warhammer.
Very happy to see you use "The Name of the Wind" as an example of gigantic fantasy works.
Moorcock is good, from tip to hilt. Once you cross that threshold, hes in and youre on a ride
I love moorcock. the Elric books are really great.
I might read these some day but the deus ex machina trope destroyyys my interest in just about anything.
still, sounds awesome. thanks for the video!
@dorkfactory Jewel in the Skull is definitely worth a read with the cool world-building elements. You can skip the rest of them, unless you REALLY need to know what happens next.
Iron Maiden also feel like they are channelling the Eternal Champion tragedy, very explicitly, for The Trooper Eddie...
I believe he wrote the entirety of this series in like 12 days so that may explain your issues with the series.
Yeah, but I think that was also true of Corum and I LOVED that series...
It's not quite that fast but he definitely knocked a couple of books out in like a week each to pay rent
Elric was by far the best..
Definitely he says that one of those books was done in a afternoon! That is insane
Well, he WAS hanging out with Lemmy-era Hawkwind at this point, I wouldn't be surprised to see that "Kings of Speed" was not just a song title...
Back in the day (1989), the manager of the local GW store said Brian Ansell and Michael Moorcock were friends, and the Moorcockian elements in 40K were authorized.
Propoganda!
Considering citadel was producing actual eternal champion miniatures in the 80s. There is definitely some relationship going on
@@richtheunstable3359 They distributed the Stormbringer rpg in the UK
I had a bunch of Citidel Melnibonean and Elric miniatures that I used as dark elves or high elves depending on the occasion.
@@danielmiller1826 fun fact the Eternal Champion boxset is the first thing Jes Goodwin sculpted for them..then they did Melnibonean and Pan Tangian infantry..including Tigers and handlers for Pan Tang..you can see the roots of Warhammer elves in those models
If you like the dark future/fantasy sci-fi vibe you should try Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series. Corum is my favorite Moorcock character.
Me too Corum is an awesome eternal champion. One of the most sad story I've read, but beautiful!
Dorian was more interesting in an Elric novel as an incarnation of the Eternal Champion than he was in his own series.
I read an interview, where he pretty much suggested that Moorcock's Eternal champion charters where the inspiration for the early Games Workshop role play, War Hammer, and 40k games
Been a huge Moorcock fan since I was a teen in the ‘90s! Wish I still had the White Wolf Publishing omnibuses of his work that came out in the late 90’s also.
Also the symbol of chaos from warhammer is from morcock
So now I can write a story or make a game about a God Emperor of Mankind and if GW send me a legal paper threatening me with legal shenanigans I can send them back a book of Moorcock with a note written in blood saying "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID. YOU WANNA DANCE?" and then mop the floor with their arses.
Go ahead and do it to the Poles about their beloved Witcher too. That's such a shameless, and lesser, copy of Elric of Melnibone that is defies belief. If Moorcock got even a thousandth of the respect he deserves these washed up, painfully derivative franchises might have needed to actually employ something like creativity and wit.
@@chaosgyro Geralt and Elric are similar character-wise, but their books are far from the same. First witcher books are basically retellings of classic european tales in a more gritty and mature manner, while Elric books are like a five-years-old trying to tell an epic story, choking on the way. If you want a shameless copy, look no further than on Salvatore's Dark Elf ;)
I just picked up Hawkmoon at Value Village! At my pace I probably wont get to it til next year.
The TBR pile is murder to slow readers like us, eh?
I read "The Jewel in the Skull" graphic novel as a kid. I was NOT ready.
That's just awesome. Hope the trauma wasn't serious...😅
@@secretfirebooks7894 My little mind could not handle the sheer Calibre of what i was reading. I loved it.
How did you manage not to mention the bromance Hawkmoon has with the true hero of the series, D'Averc!?
And their _incredible_ fashion choices!
Hawkmoon: "I've got an idea d'Averc. Let's infiltrate the heavily-guarded palace of our greatest enemy dressed up as stilt-walking mandarins from an imaginary future China. We'll totes get away with it. No one there knows what people in China are really like."
d'Averc: "Great! I'll boink his sister while we're there."
And lo, it was just stupid enough to work.
Dude this video was awesome! I clicked on it fully expecting warhamtube drama and instead I received an awesome review of a body of work that I had no clue existed.
Glad to be of service! I hope you check out Hawkmoon and the other multiverse novels by Mr. Moorcock. He truly is the most underrated fantasy author of our time!
The deus ex machina is a trope of Moorcock's Elric series - Elric and Moonglum surrounded by demon giants, and Elric calls upon the power of... THE INSECT GOD - YES, THE INSECT GOD, WHO OWES A FAVOR TO THE EMPEROR OF MELNIBONE - THAT'S WHO SHALL SAVE US - COME AND AID ME, INSECT GOD - SAVE ME IN MY TIME OF PERIL... and then they win, lol.
Yeah, fate is an actual force in his stories. Occasionally, fate will literally pull off some unlikely bs last second in order to save the eternal champion from some peril, right until the champion's task is complete
@@Voodooeddoll Yep. There are events and characters that are behind the scenes. The Warrior in Jet and Gold pops up in the nick of time to save Hawkmoon a few times, but he's doing the work of the Balance and Fate and is meant to be wherever he needs to be. This never hurt any of the stories for me as Hawkmoon, an aspect of the Eternal Champion, is "Fates Fool".
Arioch is a god of war
One of the first fantasy series I read! Inherited some of the books from my mother and was instantly hooked. Easy to read and a really interesting setting.
i like how the opening accurately describes the modern democratic party in detail.
Count Brass Series is pretty solid, though… it does get pretty sad at the start, but it does improve mood wise as you get through it.
Amazing series!
i always believed that menlibonians were the inspiration for dark eldar
The dark elves riff off them.pretty heavily
You aren't wrong
The Wych Cults feel like they were based entirely on that one Harkonnen Arena scene in 'Dune'.
@@thomriley1036 actual a gender reverse version of a yearly ritual Melnibonean nobles participated in..
@@mrspeigel3593 Good point. Those early Elric books were published at least a couple years before 'Dune' was printed in Analog magazine as well.
I love Moorcock, I've about 80% of his books (he's alot). Thank you for drawing attention to his work, he deserves more fans and recognition. The Erekose books are my favourite and the End of time books are fantastic too.
I still have fond memories of Hawkmoon's fight against the Dark Empire of Granbretan in Book I.
And Corum! Corum was very cool.
Elric of Melniboné is one of my favorite fantasy characters. Can't believe I've never heard of Hawkmoon.
@DoomMishima He and Elric (along with all the other Eternal Champions) team up in "Sailor on the Seas of Fate". If you love Elric you should enjoy most of the Hawkmoon series as well.
After watching this vid, I ran out and got the Hawkmoon trilogy paperback. I’m half-way through the second book and really enjoying it. Thank you.
For a pulpy Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche his Kane of Mars series is fun. And no one does unintended consequences like Elric. Then there’s the Oswald Bastable series for proto-steampunk and the Dancers At The End of Time. But my personal favourite are the Jerry Cornelius stories which contain echoes of all the others.
Completely agree on the remarks about Corum. I barely remember Hawkmoon. I do remember Elric, as it's the first I read and one of the first fantasy books I read, but Corum I still remember a few sentences by heart, some of the humor hidden in the worlds full of despair Moorcock wrote.
Corum is S tier.
Thank you for the video. I read the Eternal Champion series as high school student in the '70's. I really enjoyed your summary of the Runestaff series, which brought back great memories of the books.
"the pace is really breakneck"
Bro he probably wrote most of this high as a kite.
Funnily enough in a recent interview Moorcock said he honestly can't write under the influence
"I was in my 20s and needed beer money quick. It's amazing how productive you can find yourself being with the correct motivation." -- Poul Anderson
@@epimetrius7348 Maybe today but in the 60s he was a know partaker of acid he's been sober since 1975. Rumor is he wrote The Final Programme in 3 days while on a trip.
@@hirozhen7475 that checks out
@@hirozhen7475 one of my favourites as a little stoner highschooler
Great video! Hawkmoon's probably my favourite high-fantasy book, even though I'd agree with all your criticisms. For me Hawkmoon's lack of character isn't much of a hindrance as Moorcock always has him paired with at least one another highly entertaining character (friend or foe) at all times, the stand-out being the immensely cynical D'Averc, who gets all the best lines. There's a ton of flavour to the story as well, so even if you aren't gelling with the character or the 'and then...' story you're at least getting a very fun travelogue. I do have to add as well that the final battle in the books is immense and a great pay off.
An additional fun aspect is reading this as a Brit! Oft have I chuckled through its pages idly, goblet of blood in hand as I've listened to the slaves screaming as they... uh. Forget I said that. There's a lot of sly jokes sprinkled through, a good many in Moorcock choosing the most banal of English towns to have his incredibly and amusingly evil barons hail from. I mean, Croyden or 'Kroiden'. You may as well have the evil Lord Arghabargh of Kleveland if this were American. I also like the message. It's about the warring nations of Europe uniting against a common threat. I think Moorcock was getting very tired of cod chest-thumping lazy patriotism and jingoism feeding off the second world war and decided to invert it, with Britain as the totalitarian nightmare and the rest of Europe having to stop us. As somebody who likes the idea of brotherhood among nations it kind of appeals to me.
Anyway, this one is up there with 'Dancers at the End of Time' and the novella 'Behold the Man' as my all time favourite Moorcock. From time-hopping and gender-bending Wildean far-future louche empires to the inadvisability of going back in time and standing in for Jesus Christ, the man has range. His work pairs very well with the strange bloody fairytales of his friend Angela Carter as well. Anyway, going to check out your channel thoroughly now as I had a lot of fun watching this one. Thanks again!
I just re (re-re) read Jewel in the Skull last week! We need animated series for Hawkmoon, Corum, and Elric!
Where Chainsaw Warrior comes from.
I was reading Moorcock 50+ years ago and looked for them to show up at my local book store. Corum, Elric, et al
I've almost finished the Corum series. I have just begun Elric. Looks like this is next on my list. There is a reason why Moorcock is a world-class world builder and fantasy action writer.
I loves me my Moorcock
yes, I read them, in the 80's, borrowed from a friend, but they were hard to come across by comparison to other works, including the Count Brass series
Way back they even had a TTRPG for Hawkmoon
Awesome review. I was sold 2 mins in and have just ordered my copy from Amazon. Thank you brother! 🫡
Fantastic! Happy reading, friend! 🤘
@@secretfirebooks7894 ❤️
“Reject modernity embrace sword and sorcery” I like that
moorcock is a master of the genre which ever incarnation of the eternal champion and they flow nicely easy reading and entertaining
Elric of melnibone by moorcock and the chronicles of corum are some of the best all time sci Fi/ fantasy... If Tolkien wrote a folktale for England, moorcock wrote the chaos version...
This is so great! I love the feeling of older sword & sorcery compared to today’s ultra-glossy high fantasy.
I just love Morecock. My favourite is Hawkmoon. It's meaningful and epic.
I read this series in the single novel hardback =)
It’s my dads favourite, thanks for covering this it’s been so long since I thought about it
Super glad I found your channel!
Essentially MM was buried under the work of hundreds of imitators!!!
Hey, I THANK YOU!! For this upload. Very good presentation! You have helped me break some of my own conditioning at the hands of some powerful imperialists who have gone so far as to imbed within my mandible something called the BLUETOOTH!
Bizarre how England is continuing to head in that direction all the quicker! It's a work of fiction, not a blueprint!
What fantasy world are you living in that you think England is on a trajectory to become a globe spanning evil empire?
Love his stuff, best read while listening to Hawkwind!
Very interesting review man. Interesting and valid points raised. I love his books but as you mention, they are a point in time. The world of Scifi and fantasy has evolved in ways he could never have imagined (nor I, I started reading this stuff from 1986 when I was 12). All of what currently exists, would be fundamentally different without Moorcock. This may be a controversial opinion but his influence is probably greater overall than Tolkien. The multiverse, the eternal champion, the balance between chaos and law etc, none of these are Moorcocks inventions and he has never claimed them either. If anything, he has credited his sources (Glilgamesh for example). They are literary tropes that are thousands of years old. The explicit darkness and real interest in the psychology of the protagonists across his multiverse series and all who interact with them. The explicitly perverse nature of that darkness, its drives and obsessions. The complexity, interconnectedness of the books and the different series and really important, how each was different, was unprecedented. Some of the concepts he introduced me to as a teenager was revolutionary (remember, this is pre-internet!, only limited TV/Radio channels and paper media).
Awesome stuff! The more I read Moorcock the more I really do grow to love the fantasy genre. His influence is undoubtedly important and it's a shame more people aren't reading him today. Thanks for sharing! You're a true Eternal Champion yourself!⚔️
I've just heard your intro and subscribed, fantastic so far I laughed pretty hard
I was sharing this video to a friend and while I was typing (England) you made the exact joke as I finished typing the ) bracket in the intro. !
Nearly impossible to find completes for Moorcock's series in the 80s and 90s in the US (outside of Elric). The Corum cycle was the best pulpish series Ive ever read. Incredible work supremely original and packed with philosophical concepts.
Thank you for mentioning this. I'll be honest, I never heard about Hawkmoon. Most be one of Moorcock's earlier works. But yeah, seemed like a nice enough world building, but apart from that ... not certain. Hell, we got the Big E from here and Dune, so ... that's that I guess. :D
moorcock is a legend ...
Been saying this since I started checking out war hammer.I was under the spell of mister moore cox eternal champion for many ion's just a humble companion though only one heart
I took a vacation to the Camargue because of these books.
Ha! Awesome! I hear their giant mutant flamingos are beautiful.
Nice to see some Frit Leiber in the intro!
Oh, I'll get to him soon enough. Faf and the Mouser are on my review list.
@@secretfirebooks7894 Can't wait. I've always loved the "Bazaar of the Bizarre".
@@secretfirebooks7894I think you'll love these books.
This review really brought me into the world and sold me
Inspired me a lot in 90s. Still surprised he's not that famous
With film studios seemingly starved for ideas I'm surprised Moorcocks IP hasn't been picked up.
GW happily plagiarised all sorts of great sources for the cobbled together scrapbook setting that 40k became. Anyone that's read these can see the hole where they cut out the emperor for 40k and then pasted him in entirely. The adeptus mechanicus is the tech priests/nobles of the Gran Bretan tech orders just without the animal mask motifs, instead they went off some sketches john Blanche had knocking around.
Remember the guys who put together the original 40k game were gamers and gamers don't worry about lifting from the books and movies they love. When their campaign stuff became 40k it was full of Dune (astropaths and guild navigators, the butlerian Jihad - no AI or high order computers) and Moorcock's stuff was some of the best weird scifi/fantasy crossover we had back then. I honestly think Count Brass was the foreshadow of the Stormcast. Then again Moorcock was the one who shifted the great conflict narritive from good vs evil to Law vs Chaos in the eternal champion books. D&D wasn't shy about lifting that to stretch fundamental world views onto a simple plot on two axes, elegant really. Both 40k and Age of Sigmar make Chaos with a big C the enemy of life and over simplify it back onto one, it's just the other one.
None of this comes as any surprise and the "Loremasters" of the 40k internet are all the more ridiculous for pronouncing coda for decades of retcon on a foundation of happy bookshelf plagiarism. I just wish they'd gone heavier into 2000AD ideas but the guys respected it too much. Just imagine if the Guard were all Rogue Troopers
Makes their posturing complete hubris for anyone that was there at the beginning, we're all old farts now so our derisive laughter isn't something they even hear heh
There's so much more to point to but This is enough to make the point.
Love the Thunder Force IV theme right there at @2:03
You should definitely make a video review of the Thunder Force V - The Vastian Steel story, as it is the most epic, climatic and tragic story depicting the battle of man against machine. It evokes powerful emotions and thoughts and conveys all the intensity and drama of that grim and sinister & dystopian war ravaged world.
If you play Thunder Force V on the PS1 and read the story line from the txt files contained within the CD itself, the story reports in the menu as you progress and the intro & ending FMVs, it reveals that the most advanced AI created by human science used to decrypt all the secrets of the alien starship discovered by man on the furthest reaches of the solar system beyond the kuiper-belt and Oort Cloud in a desolate and dark place called the Vastian belt which is also implied to be a ship from an alternate future human time-line, at some point mysteriously gained consciousness and self awareness and realized Man's wickedness and evil deeds and considered them a threat for the cosmos and decided to wipe out humanity by taking control of the technology it had decrypted and the vast Starfleet of powerful warships in orbit around the Earth which it had constructed for them over the centuries, culminating in the dramatic and tragic events of the game. It's a far darker and sinister story with a lot of twists & subversive scenario than the matrix films with an awesome sound track and excellent gameplay, imposing weaponry and huge bosses, accompanied with excellent wallpapers that you unlock as you progress, ideal to accompany a video review like this.
Imagine a world of good microphones.
Micro...phone? I'm afraid I don't know this word. Is it some kind of food?
What a wonderful channel! I shall bestow my subscription! Don’t fail me!
Michael Moorcock is one of my facvourite fantasy/sci fi author's. anyone who's read the stories of elric of melnibone and hawkmoon knows how influential they are to the genre. practically 80% of bungie's storytelling of games like Halo, Marathon and even destiny come from the elric of melnibone books
I am a champion. And I am Eternal.
And I suffer eternally.
Subscribed!
I never knew about this
A deeper universe to explore...
Micheal Moorcock is the antithesis of Tolkien and just as influential in the genre of fantasy. The Eternal Champion series is one of my favorite ideas in fantasy fiction. Well worth a read to realize how many modern authors took his ideas and further expanded them.
This is a pretty good review. Very down to earth and focused on plot, setting, and action. I like it a lot. But please don't reject modernity- it has so much to offer. ;-)
While the God Emperor of Mankind takes a lot from Huon, he's more of a rip-off of Torquemada from 2000AD's Nemesis the Warlock, the immortal ruler from a Terran Empire who is a somewhat divine figure and was explained to be several historical figures.
And who do you think Mills and O'Neill were pastiching? Everyone in that scene in that period read and internalized Moorcock.
@@harbl99 That's the point. GW made a rip-off of a rip-off.
It can be certain that lack of polish or even quality to a degree, is simply due a talent Moorcock may well be the world literary emperor of...speed. He banged out of a typewriter at least one of those Hawkmoon novels IN A WEEKEND. Authors spend months & more often, years on novels. Early Moorcock was magic worked in mere DAYS OR WEEKS. It's crazy!
Thanks for this!
lightening force 2 song? A man of culture..
Just discovered your channel, looks like exactly my kind of content. Great video, can't wait to look through the others. Subscription well deserved 💪
Thank YOU for checking out the channel! Plenty of old school SF/Fantasy reviews are on the way!⚔️
@@secretfirebooks7894 Pleasure ! Already found something i definitely will get,the Rob Rimes Barbarians of the storm Books.Exactly the stuff im looking for :D
Btw also enjoyed the new Chuck Dixon Conan Books,Caravan of the Damned was also great.
i was wondering if someone had covered this or not. Moorcock is the msot ripped off novelist of all time. Yes, even beyond tolkien.